The Supreme Court yesterday allowed states to prohibit defendants
from claiming that they were insane at the time they committed their
crime.

The court, without comment from the justices, let stand a ruling
from the Montana Supreme Court that said abolishing the insanity defense
does not violate the Constitution. While the court's order does not
apply beyond the individual case, other states could follow Montana's
lead.

"It would be a mistake if a large number of states did this," said
University of Virginia law professor Richard J. Bonnie, an expert in the
field. "But I don't think the momentum is there. We went through an
important test of that after {John W.} Hinckley {Jr.}" was acquitted on
charges of shooting President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

The insanity defense, adopted from centuries-old English law, arose
from the notion that some people are so mentally diseased or unable to
understand their actions that it is unfair to hold them responsible for
criminal behavior.

While the defense is rarely invoked, it has arisen in numerous
high-profile trials. Most recently, Lorena Bobbitt used the insanity
defense to persuade a jury to acquit her of charges related to cutting
off her husband's penis.

After Hinckley's acquittal, several states adopted legislation
restricting the defense by raising the burden of proof for a defendant
who claims insanity, or allowing juries to find someone insane but still
guilty and eligible for prison. Members of Congress have intermittently
proposed legislation that would eliminate the insanity defense for
federal crimes. In 1984, the full House rejected an attempt to curtail
its use.

Assistant Montana Attorney General Barbara C. Harris said yesterday
that state lawmakers abolished the insanity defense in 1979 in an
attempt "to narrow the focus of the criminal proceeding."

She maintained in court papers that state law continues to protect
mentally incompetent defendants in other ways. For example, they must be
found fit to stand trial. Defendants also may introduce evidence of a
mental defect or disease when it helps prove that they did not have the
state of mind to be found guilty of a particular offense, such as
attempted murder. Still, in Montana, insanity cannot be used as an
independent defense to avoid a guilty verdict.

In yesterday's case, Joe Junior Cowan, a diagnosed paranoid
schizophrenic, broke into a Forest Service residence quarters in remote
Missoula County, Mont. He beat forestry worker Maggie Doherty until she
was unconscious. His lawyer claimed that at the time of the crime Cowan
was in the throes of a psychotic delusion, which caused him to first run
crazily around Doherty's house, looking in the windows and yelling,
"It's my house" and "Who are you?"

The trial judge nonetheless found Cowan guilty of attempted murder
and aggravated burglary and sentenced him to 60 years in prison. The
Montana Supreme Court upheld the conviction, saying that neither the
constitutional guarantee of due process nor the constitutional
prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment gives a defendant the
right to an insanity defense. It noted that the trial judge had heard
testimony about Cowan's mental state yet found that he acted purposely
and knowingly when he committed the crime.

In his petition to the high court in Cowan v. Montana, Cowan's
lawyer, William Boggs, said the trial was "nothing more than a cruel
joke" because Cowan lacked "normal awareness" and "moral culpability."
Boggs asked the justices to clarify whether the Constitution does or
does not guarantee an insanity defense.

He noted that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist had remarked in a
1985 case: "It is highly doubtful that due process requires a state to
make available an insanity defense to a criminal defendant." Boggs cited
similar statements by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M.
Kennedy.

The University of Virginia's Bonnie said that the states that have
rejected abolition of the insanity defense have done so not out of
constitutional concerns, but rather "people's view that it would be
morally wrong" to eliminate the defense.

Georgetown University law professor Heathcote Woolsey Wales, also an
expert in the insanity defense, said, "I think it's important for the
integrity {of the criminal justice system} that you have a mark
separating criminal responsibility and nonresponsibility."

In separate action yesterday, the justices allowed federal
prosecutors to use an anti-arson law against two men who burned crosses
in suburban Chicago.

The court left intact an appeals court ruling that upheld
convictions even though there was no fire damage to property or people.
The 7th U.S. Court of Appeals also rejected arguments that the
cross-burners' First Amendment free speech rights were impinged.

Kenneth T. Hayward and William B. Krause Jr. had burned crosses on
the driveway of a white family after they had entertained black guests
in their Keeneyville, Ill., home. The men were convicted of the use of
fire to commit a federal felony, as well as other civil rights
violations.

The Justice Department, which had won the case at the appeals court,
nonetheless urged the Supreme Court to hear the dispute because federal
courts are not sure how to interpret a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that
struck down a St. Paul, Minn., "hate crime" ordinance. The court had
ruled that St. Paul's ban on the display of certain symbols, including a
burning cross, impermissibly targeted speech.

The Justice Department noted that the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, citing the 1992 high court ruling, found that the federal
anti-arson law does not cover cross-burnings. (An appeal of that ruling
is pending at the Supreme Court.)

"in the last decade of the Twentieth Century, cross burnings are
still occurring with alarming frequency," Solicitor General Drew S. Days
III told the justices in Hayward v. United States.

"When a cross is burned with the intent to threaten and intimidate
those who are exercising their federally guaranteed rights, the United
States is determined to prosecute those responsible. This court should
make clear that its decision {in 1992} does not cast doubt upon the
propriety of these prosecutions."